Projects
You'll find information about past and on-going research below. Still have questions? Check out the article links or contact us!
Massachusetts Summer Drought Restrictions
We are currently investigating the effectiveness of drought restrictions used by public water suppliers across Massachusetts to reduce summer water consumption.
This work was awarded an NSF ERI grant.
We have a published conference proceedings paper out entitled "Public Water Supply in Massachusetts from 2009 to 2022".
Review: IDF Curves Given Climate Change
We performed a review of the research on intensity-duration-frequency curves under non-stationarity from climate change.
Schlef, K.E., K. Kunkel, et al. (2022). Review: Incorporating Non-stationarity from Climate Change into Rainfall Frequency and Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) Curves. Journal of Hydrology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2022.128757Access for free until Feb 2023.
Long-Term Flood Projection Under Climate Change
We compared different approaches to projecting floods in the future under climate change.
Schlef, K. E., B. François, and C. Brown (2021). Comparing Flood Projection Approaches Across Hydro-climatologically Diverse United States River Basins. Water Resources Research 57, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR025861.
François, B., K. E. Schlef, S. Wi, and C. Brown (2019). Design Considerations for Hydrologic Extremes in a Changing Climate – A Review. Journal of Hydrology, 574, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydol.2019.04.068.
Schlef, K. E., B. François, A. Robertson, and C. Brown (2018). A General Methodology for Climate Informed Approaches to Long-Term Flood Projection – Illustrated with the Ohio River Basin. Water Resources Research 54, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018WR023209.
Atmospheric Circulation and Extreme Floods
We used machine learning to identify synoptic-scale atmospheric circulation patterns associated with extreme floods across the United States. Check out this news article about our work, and this interactive website where you can delve more deeply into our results.
Schlef, K. E., H. Moradkhani, and U. Lall (2019). Atmospheric Circulation Patterns Associated with Extreme United States Floods Identified via Machine Learning. Scientific Reports, 9, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-43496-w.
Flood Risk Perception and Mitigation
We interviewed flood victims and public officials in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (West Africa) to explore how perceptions of flood risk influence ability to implement mitigation to reduce future flood damages.
Schlef, K. E., L. Kaboré, H. Karambiri, Y. C. E. Yang, and C. Brown (2018). “Relating Perceptions of Flood Risk and Coping Ability to Mitigation Behavior in West Africa: Case Study of Burkina Faso.” Environmental Science and Policy, 89, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2018.07.013.
Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources
We used a bottom-up approach called "decision-scaling" to assess the impacts of climate change and changes in water demand on water supply.
Ray, P., M. Taner, K. E. Schlef, S. Wi, H. Khan, S. Freeman, and C. Brown (2019). “Growth of the Decision Tree: Advances in Bottom-Up Climate Change Risk Management.” Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 55(4), https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.12701.
Schlef, K. E., S. Steinschneider, and C. Brown (2018). “Spatiotemporal Impacts of Climate and Demand on Water Supply in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint Basin.” Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 114(2), https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0000865.
Disclaimer: Research before 2020 was performed at other institutions besides WNE.